Billy Joe Shaver – Billy and the Kid

There must be a special tincture of anguish reserved for parents who outlive their child, especially when that child is taken by wanton or self-destructive circumstances. And if an equally bitter draught exists for the loss of other loved ones, then Billy Joe Shaver has drunk deep of that, as well. The drug-induced death of his son Eddy on New Year’s Eve 2000 capped a Job-like swath of loss that also carried off, in short order, Billy Joe’s mother and his beloved (hell, he married her three times) wife Brenda.

Anyone could be forgiven for succumbing to despair in the wake of such a cruel swipe of mortality. Billy Joe Shaver chose — or was compelled — to seek such solace as he was able in his music and his faith. That healing process continues on Billy And The Kid, a collection of previously unfinished tracks from 1996 that were originally prepared for an Eddy Shaver solo album. With producer Tony Colton, Billy Joe has fleshed out many of the eleven songs with new vocals and lyrics to create a rough-hewn product that marks father and son’s latest collaboration in a body of work that stretches back to 1993’s Tramp On Your Street.

In a slightly spooky, but not uncharacteristic turn of phrase, Shaver writes in his liner notes that he and Colton experienced “visits and instructions” from Eddy during the album’s production. If so, then what Eddy Shaver presumably had (has?) in mind is an album that alternates between electrified southern blues-boogie and thoughtful, melodic excursions that illuminate his wide-ranging instrumental taste and craft.

An album of songs filled with images of angels, demons, and fiery, vaguely Biblical imagery, Billy And The Kid is nonetheless bracketed by a pair of quiet meditations. “Fame” is a Billy Joe-penned look at the mixed blessings of that seductive condition (“that all-consuming fire”); the concluding “Necessary Evil”, an extended conversation between Eddy and his guitar that’s very much in the Robert Johnson mode, is filled with both desire and foreboding. “You’re the first thing I’ve gotta have,” he sings pensively, “And the last thing I really need.”

In between are some rockers (“King Of Fools”, “If It Don’t Kill You”, “Baptism Of Fire”) that borrow from the blues ‘n’ boogie glory days of mid-’70s Capricorn Records. (Vocally, Eddy sounds more like the offspring of Gregg Allman than of his father, and the Allman Brothers’ Dickey Betts was one of his musical mentors.) A few quieter songs allude to the dichotomies of both Shavers’ personalities — “Window Rock” is an eerie mood piece (“the spirit tapped me on the shoulder…”) set out in the slick-rock Four Corners country.

But it is the lovely and elegiac “Eagle On The Ground” that particularly stands out, with Billy Joe’s lament over loss (“Love she lies like an eagle on the ground/A dream cut down in its prime”) coupled with some beautifully-filigreed soloing by his son. Eddy Shaver may be gone but, on record at least, father and son are still standing shoulder to shoulder.